


Heart on Your Sleeve

by brightblackholes



Category: Boy/Girl Battle - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Genre: F/M, High School, Post-Canon, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24167194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightblackholes/pseuds/brightblackholes
Summary: On his sixteenth birthday, Wally Hatford wakes up, checks his arms, legs, chest, and back in front of a mirror, and determines that he doesn’t have his soulmark yet.Written for writer's month day 16: soulmates
Relationships: Wally Hatford/Caroline Malloy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Writer's Month 2019





	Heart on Your Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

> I WILL finish writer's month before next August if it kills me!
> 
> Anyway I was feeling a bit nostalgic about these crazy kids, so here's a nice soulmate AU for them

On his sixteenth birthday, Wally Hatford wakes up, checks his arms, legs, chest, and back in front of a mirror, and determines that he doesn’t have his soulmark yet. That’s fine. There was only a 50/50 chance that it would appear today, anyway, since both people in a pairing get their soulmarks when the younger person turns sixteen. This just means that he’s older than his soulmate. So is Jake, and he’s still waiting on his.

Truth be told, Wally isn’t in a hurry to find his soulmate. He wants one eventually, but he has enough on his mind with homework and trying to plan for college. Having someone else randomly thrown into the mix that he’s supposed to start searching for sounds more like a stressor than any sort of relief.

“Happy birthday!” his mom says as soon as he enters the kitchen. “Did you find your soulmate’s name yet?”

Wally shakes his head and eats his cereal. He has to repeat the conversation with his brothers, the Bensons, and half of his classmates. By lunchtime, Wally almost wishes he had a name simply so everyone would stop looking at him like he deserves pity.

The Malloys call that night, after dinner and cake and a few presents. It’s been years since they’ve seen each other, but family phone conversations during holidays shifted to birthday conversations with just the kids where they get to rib each other and give a few notable updates. As per tradition, the phone gets handed to Wally first so the girls can sing an awful version of happy birthday right into his ear. Jake has devised a plan for how to make Eddie’s particularly awful next time, including banging pots and pans together and Peter getting his trumpet out.

“So, Wally, do you have a name?” Caroline asks after the singing (if it can be called that).

“No.”

“I wouldn’t be able to stand that,” Caroline says. “If I don’t know my person the second I turn sixteen, it’ll be worse torture than anything you put us through as kids.”

“I don’t mind,” Wally says. “It just means she’s a bit younger. I might not even meet her for a few years, so it doesn’t really matter when I get the mark if that’s the case.”

Caroline makes a dramatic, anguished sound before Beth presumably takes the phone from her and asks about the general boring parts of his life that have changed since the last phone call on her own birthday. He doesn’t have much to say, so he listens to her update on Ohio and the phone gets passed to Josh, then Jake, then ends with Peter because he always talks to the girls the longest. Wally brushes his teeth and shoots a silent prayer up for Caroline’s soulmate, because that person is going to have their hands full. He just hopes that whoever ends up with her can be grounding without being stifling. Someone equally as dramatic and flighty as her would make an absolutely insufferably pairing, so balance would be good. Caroline needs room to breathe though, and while she can be dramatic and ridiculous the thought of her trying to contain that for her soulmate leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Wally swishes some mouthwash around and shakes the thought out of his head. Soulmates are supposed to be perfect for each other, so there’s no use worrying about who Caroline or him or anyone could end up with.

When Wally turns off his light that night, that’s the last he thinks of soulmates for a few months. He remains devoid of soulmarks for almost a whole year, until he joins Peter at the breakfast table in October of his junior year.

“What’s that?” Peter asks, gesturing with his spoon while Wally is pouring some Captain Crunch into a bowl.

“Huh?”

“On your arm. What’s that?”

Wally puts the cereal down and flips his arm over, finally spotting the black scrawl stretching from near his elbow almost to his pinky.

_Caroline Lenore Malloy_

Huh. He rubs at it once, but it’s perfectly imprinted on his skin. There’s nothing to rub off.

“Is that your soulmark? Is Caroline your soulmate?” Peter asks, barely restrained glee evident in his voice. Wally tries to figure out the date and matches it up with Caroline’s birthday.

Huh.

“Don’t tell the others yet, okay?” he says. “I wanna talk to Caroline first before they find out.”

“I knew it! I was hoping that one of you were soulmates with one of the girls, and you and Caroline make the most sense!”

Wally frowns.

“Josh and Beth actually dated, remember?”

“Yeah, in middle school. They weren’t meant to last. After Jake and Eddie didn’t match up there was only one option left, and I was right!”

“Whatever. Just, no texting the twins, okay? And you can’t tell the Bensons, either. This is my news to tell, and I’m waiting until after we call Caroline tonight,” Wally says. Peter nods, but Wally knows that Doug will know before school begins, which means that the other Bensons will know soon enough. Peter’s inability to keep secrets is his fatal flaw, and someday Wally is sure that it’s going to bite him in the butt.

He keeps the soulmark carefully hidden from his parents and classmates for the entire day. Peter sends him enough furtive glances at dinner that his mother asks what they’re plotting, but Wally answers that it’s a birthday surprise for Caroline before Peter has a chance to open his mouth, and his parents exchange a smile and tell him it’s very sweet. When they ask for specifics Wally mimes zipping his lips, and Peter keeps his mouth shut for possibly the first time in his life.

After dinner, Peter drags him over to the landline and picks it up. Wally takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the way his heart jumps with each number Peter types in.

“Malloy residence, Caroline speaking,” Caroline trills from the other end of the line. They break out into Happy Birthday, but it’s mostly Peter carrying it. Wally is not musically inclined. Wally is also suddenly very nervous about talking to Caroline. The line of ink on his arm itches with the need to be addressed.

Immediately after the singing, Peter starts his questions about everything pertaining to the girls’ lives. Apparently Jake and Josh already called her, and she launches into an evaluation of how rehearsal for the school play has been going and the cake Beth made. Once that’s been exhausted, he thrusts the phone at Wally.

“Okayhere’sWallyhavefunbye!” he says, then scampers out of the room before Wally can reach him to hit him on the back of the head.

“Hey, Caroline,” he says, voice shakier than he wants it to be. Gosh, his palms feel sweaty. It’s not even a big deal, right? It’s just Caroline. She’s not even locked in his garage pretending to be rabid right now.

“Hi, Wally,” she says, then the conversation immediately trails into silence.

Caroline is never silent.

What if she doesn’t want him? What if she woke up this morning, saw his name, and was disappointed? Sure, Wally was surprised, but he can see it now. What if she can’t? He may not have felt a pressing need to find his soulmate, but now that he knows the thought of her rejection stings worse than anything. Not to mention that things would then be awkward with the Malloys as well, and he can’t do that to his brothers. The girls have been in their lives in some capacity for so long now that he’s not sure what it would be like without them.

He clears his throat.

“So.”

There’s a pause.

“Did you get it?” Caroline asks. Her voice shakes a bit, and Wally is hit with the thought that she might be a bit nervous, too. That’s absurd. Caroline isn’t scared of anything.

“Y-yeah. It’s on my arm.”

“Oh thank goodness!” Caroline squeals. “Wally, we’re soulmates!”

Wally huffs a laugh and feels his chest unclench.

“Do you remember when I decided I loved you that Valentine’s Day while we were still living in Virginia and you hated it? Bet you feel pretty silly now, huh?” Caroline says.

“That’s because you were really annoying about it,” Wally replies, but he’s smiling. Caroline makes an affronted noise.

“You can’t say that! I’m your soulmate!”

“You may be my soulmate, but you’re still Caroline, and I’m still Wally,” he says. Caroline hums on the other end.

“Yeah, I guess we are,” she says, but something in her voice makes him think that she understands what he means.

A year ago, when Wally didn’t get a soulmate tattoo, he wasn’t disappointed. Looking down at her name on his arm now, he wonders if he was subconsciously waiting for her. She’s always been Caroline, and he’s always been Wally, but it’s nice to know that now they’ll always be there for each other. She has part of his soul, and he has hers. He’s looking forward to her annoying him for the rest of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
